With the generous support of the Sheng Yen Educational Foundation, the Research Group in Buddhist Philosophy at the National Chengchi University (NCCU) is pleased to invite applications for a postdoctoral research fellowship. The term of the appointment is August 1, 2018, to July 31, 2019.

I’d like to call out one item in the recently-published issue of Comparative Philosophyfor special mention. “The Future of Confucian Political Philosophy” is a 22,000 word edited transcript of a roundtable discussion that was held in Hong Kong in February 2017. (Direct link to the transcript is here.) The main speakers are:

Stephen C. ANGLE, Wesleyan University

Elton CHAN, Yale-NUS College

Joseph CHAN, University of Hong Kong

Jiwei CI, University of Hong Kong

Ruiping FAN, City University of Hong Kong

Yong HUANG, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Yi-Huah JIANG, City University of Hong Kong

Sungmoon KIM, City University of Hong Kong

We each make presentations, and then there is ample time for discussion, both among the invited speakers and with other attendees. On behalf of all participants, I hope that readers will find this to be an engaging snapshot of the some of the state of the art — and some glimpses of the future — of Confucian political philosophy. Discussion here of its themes is of course encouraged!

A new volume titled Ancient Greece and China Compared was recently published by Cambridge University Press, edited by G. E. R. Lloyd and Jingyi Jenny Zhao. The title features fourteen essays that compare different aspects of ancient Greece and China from an interdisciplinary perspective, together with an introduction by G. E. R. Lloyd and an afterword by Michael Loewe. Those interested may like to access the book’s webpage on the CUP website here.

The next session of the Columbia University Seminar on Neo–Confucian Studies will convene on Friday, February 16th, from 3:30 to 5:30pm, in the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. The speaker will be Jean Tsui, who will be presenting a book chapter entitled “The Affective Origin of Translated Political Modernity in Late Qing China.” Please contact the rapporteur for the seminar if you will attend and would like a copy of the paper.

Lexington has published Aaron B. Creller, Making Space for Knowing: A Capacious Approach to Comparative Epistemology. The publisher’s description follows, and see here for the table of contents and other information.

Third Biannual Ph.D. Student and Young Scholar Workshop: “Ancient Historiography in Comparison”

International Center for the Study of Ancient Text Cultures, Renmin University of China (Beijing, June 13–18, 2018)

The International Center for the Study of Ancient Text Cultures (ICSATC), hosted at Renmin University of China, holds its third Ph.D. Student and Young Scholar workshop on June 13-18, 2018. Four renowned scholars from the fields of Ancient Chinese Historiography, Ancient Greek and Roman Historiography, and Ancient Jewish and Biblical Historiography will present lectures and seminars on specific topics. In addition, there will be a keynote lecture at the beginning of the workshop. There also will be student research activities to complement the lectures and seminars. The principal language of instruction and interaction will be English.

International MA Program in Chinese Philosophy: School of Philosophy, Beijing Normal University

The School of Philosophy at Beijing Normal University, one of China’s premier institutes of higher education, offers a two-year Master’s Degree in Chinese Philosophy.

The program offers a comprehensive range of courses in the major traditions of Chinese philosophy, including Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, as well as an inclusive range of courses in the Chinese philosophies of history, ethics, and politics. Courses emphasize comparative and international perspectives while engaging with the Western and other great traditions of world philosophy.

I often have trouble understanding the ease with which some Western observers/scholars living outside of Chinese-speaking societies try to merge modern feminist ideas with traditional Chinese culture, especially Confucian discourses. From a more embedded perspective, these attempts often look oversimplifying, or simply unconvincing. Again and again, social reality in China follows its own laws, not those imagined by observers outside of China.

The annual meeting of the New York Conference on Asian Studies — NYCAS 2018 — will be hosted by the Rochester Institute of Technology on September 21 and 22, 2018. The theme of the meeting is “Innovation and Invention.” Paper, panel, and roundtable proposals are welcome from faculty and students in New York and beyond. Information on the meeting and how to submit your proposal is available here: https://www.rit.edu/cla/nycas2018/. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide any travel subsidies. To learn more about NYCAS, visit http://asianstudies.buffalo.edu/nycas/.

The Harvard University Asia Center has published Wendy Swartz, Reading Philosophy, Writing Poetry: Intertextual Modes of Making Meaning in Early Medieval China. The press’s description is here, or read on.

The objective of the program is to promote the understanding of Chinese Buddhism by exposing participants to the daily life, practice and theory of Buddhism within a traditional Buddhist monastic setting.

Several groups within the American Academy of Religion (AAR) sponsor papers and panels that may be relevant to readers of the blog. A full list of AAR groups, along with their specific foci, is here. Note in particular the Confucian Traditions group and the Daoist Studies group. Paper proposals for next fall’s AAR annual meeting in Denver are due by March 1, 2018, via the submission system on the AAR website.

The Philosophy Department at Wesleyan University is looking for an instructor to teach one section of Classical Chinese Philosophy during the Fall, 2018 semester. (I normally teach this class, but will have a reduced teaching load due to an administrative appointment.) Interested candidates should send a CV and cover letter (please be sure to reference your teaching experience) to me. Review of applications will begin immediately and continue as needed. Please also direct any questions to me.

The following is an open letter from Hans Kuijper and Wang Ronghua; please see below for their contact info, and respond directly to them if you are interested in the project here described. Of course, discussion on the blog of the ideas raised here is also encouraged! (I have edited the letter slightly.)

To whom it may concern:

The resurrection of China over the last three decades or so has taken the world by surprise, and the cause(s), nature, scale and speed of her transformation have been the subject of numerous publications in the Western world. The mounting interest in the country that fast moves to the center stage of world politics is not confined to universities, for more and more people outside of academia are curious about China’s economy, polity, society, history, and culture. Though it is questionable whether all these publications are based on solid research and bear witness to a sound theory, it is certain that many misconceptions about China prevail, misconceptions that may easily result in the pursuit of wrong, if not disastrous, policies towards it.

The Fourth Rutgers Workshop on Chinese Philosophy will take place on Friday, April 13. The format will be similar to the third workshop (held in 2016): scholars of Chinese philosophy have written essays engaging with contemporary Western analytic philosophy, and major figures in the latter tradition will respond to each paper. Initial information is here, and I will post updates here as more information becomes available.

University of Hawaii Press has published a collection of leading Taiwanese “New Confucian” Lee Ming-huei’s essays, translated into English: David Jones, ed., Confucianism: Its Roots and Global Significance. The Amazon link (with Table of Contents) is here.

I post this at Brad Cokelet’s request. Please note that the submission deadline for the 2019 Eastern APA is February 15, 2018.

Hello, fellow philosophers! This is my second year on the Program Committee for the Eastern Division APA, and I want to strongly encourage philosophers working on Asian traditions to submit 3000-5000 word papers for the 2019 Eastern APA, which will be held in New York City. I was surprised last year by the low number of Asian papers that I saw while serving on the Program Committee and I am sure more submissions would be warmly welcomed by everyone involved.

I am only speaking for myself, and not the APA or the rest of the people involved in the process, but I believe publishing philosophers working on Asian traditions and figures will have a very solid chance of acceptance if they submit a paper, especially one that contributes to an on-going debate. Like many of you, I would be excited to see more papers of this sort on the main program so that philosophers who do not work on Asian philosophy can come to appreciate the complexity of the ideas and debates in the field. Please consider working up a short paper to submit to the on-line system, which is now open!

Northeast/Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought
April 27-29, 2018
University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT

The sixth annual Northeast Conference on Chinese Thought and the 14th annual Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought will be holding their first ever joint conference from Friday, April 27 through Sunday, April 29 2018, at the University of Connecticut, in Storrs, CT.

Sam Crane has revved up his Useless Tree blog after a hiatus, with a review of Bryan Van Norden’s Taking Back Philosophy as well as posts on “Legal Exoneration: A Confucian Perspective,” “Mass Evictions in Beijing: What Would Mencius Do?” and “Thoughts on the Classic of Filial Respect 孝經 and Student Protest in Hong Kong.”

The XXIV World Congress of Philosophy will take place in Beijing this year (August 13-20, 2018). This should be an occasion to highlight aspects of Chinese philosophy. The deadline for sending in an abstract is February 1st (late deadline is April 1st). Submissions should not exceed 1,800 words (or 3,000 characters for papers submitted in Chinese), and should be accompanied by a 200 words abstract (500 characters in Chinese). Submissions must be made through the World Congress website (here). Warp, Weft, and Way is simply passing on this information to you and does not handle submissions.

Wenqing Zhao wrote to share the following, concerning a job that was advertised in “Asian Ethics” last year. Congratulations, Wenqing!

My name is Wenqing Zhao (赵文清). I received my PhD from City University of Hong Kong in 2015. From 2015 to 2017, I have served as the Associate Director of the Center for Comparative Philosophy at Duke University. I will start working at Whitman College as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy (Tenure Track) in Spring 2018. My main areas of interests are Chinese Philosophy, Bioethics, and Moral Psychology.

Having the right attitudes in my family relationships tends to give me the right attitudes in my political relationships.

Where right family attitudes prevail in society, the right political attitudes tend also to prevail.

Differences in family culture from region to region, or from time to time, tend to be accompanied by analogous differences in political culture.

Idea #2 is very abstract, and can be understood simply in terms of order versus disorder, or natural respect versus the lack of it. Idea #3 contemplates a variety of kinds of stable order, and perhaps a variety of forms of government.

According to the 《儒家网》 (Confucian Web), here are the top 10 issues of interest to Confucians in 2017:

（一）儒学复兴进入“重建经学”新阶段

（二）传承发展传统文化上升到国家战略层面，中共十九大提出“坚定文化自信”

（三）“家与孝”讨论，凸显“人伦”的独特地位

（四）对“大陆新儒家”的评议继续深化，“新康有为主义”隐然成型

（五）敦和基金会探索国学领域机构发展模式，助力民间国学社会组织发展

（六）康晓光批判“公益商业化”，捍卫儒家公益之道

（七）阳明学不断升温，儒学已成为当代可供选择的思想资源

（八）学者持续倡议中国儒学学科建设，研究启动儒学教材编纂

（九）中伊开展文化学术交流，推进“儒伊对话”接续回儒传统

（十）孔子诞辰祭祀活动地域范围迅速扩大，祭礼仪式日益完善

This is just one opinion — the editorial staff of this website — but it gives a flavor for what some “mainland new Confucians” have been focused on. Lengthier descriptions of each issue follow below, and also at the original site.

Mercedes Valmisa wrote to share the following information; I’d be happy to pass on similar news that anyone else has to share. Congratulations, Mercedes!

I have accepted the position of Assistant Professor of Philosophy (tenure-track) at Gettysburg College’s Philosophy Department to begin in the fall 2018. For the 2018-2019 academic year, I will be an Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellow, a program intended to support faculty who can introduce diversity in the curriculum.

I got a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Sevilla (Spain), a M.A. in Chinese Philosophy from National Taiwan University, and a Ph.D. in East Asian Studies (June 2017) from Princeton University. I’m both a sinologist and a philosopher, and I work at the intersection of Chinese Studies and Chinese Philosophy: using interdisciplinary methods and approaches to explore philosophical problems across the early corpus of Chinese texts, both received and excavated. I’m particularly interested in questions of agency, efficacy, uncertainty, control, and freedom.

Thanks to your support, since it was launched in 2011, the MA and Visiting programs in Chinese philosophy (with courses taught in English) at Fudan have been extremely successful. 72 students have been enrolled in either the M.A. program (60 students) and the visiting student program (12 students). They are from all over the world, and many of them are top students in their classes, majoring in philosophy, classics, and/or East Asian or Chinese studies. Therefore, either in terms of the quantity or the quality of the students, the Fudan programs simply are the most successful of their kind (English-based post-graduate programs in Chinese philosophy) in mainland China. Continue reading “English-based MA and visiting programs in Chinese philosophy at Fudan”

The latest issue (vol. 2, no. 2) of the Journal of World Philosophies has been published, including a symposium called “Are Certain Knowledge Frameworks More Congenial to the Aims of Cross-Cultural Philosophy?” with Leigh Jenco, Steve Fuller, David H. Kim, Thaddeus Metz, Miljana Milojevic.

East China Normal University’s English Language MA and PhD programs are up and running. Last year top students in English language graduate programs at ECNU were accepted to do their PhDs in the history department at McGill and in anthropology at Harvard.

We currently have six spots open for next year. Each student is strongly encouraged to apply for the Chinese Scholarship Counsel scholarship, which awards free tuition, housing, and a 3,000rmb per month stipend. 100% of our English language (and Chinese language) foreign graduate students have been offered this scholarship to date.

Commentators have been quick to observe that the recent Chinese Communist Party Congress guaranteed President Xi Jinping’s firm grip on power for years to come. However, few have noted the Confucian roots of Mr Xi’s world view.

Mr Xi himself has been very candid about his admiration for traditional Chinese thought and his view that Chinese socialism is consistent with it. As I point out in my recent book, Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto, Mr Xi’s appropriations of traditional Chinese thought are sometimes opportunistic. But the same can be said of the way many US politicians appeal to the Bible. In addition, there are at least four points on which Mr Xi is genuinely Confucian in spirit.

In Aristotle and Confucius on Rhetoric and Truth. The Form and the Way, Haixia Lan (henceforth Lan), a specialist in the field of comparative rhetoric, follows the latest trend of comparing Aristotle’s and Confucius’ thought.1 Her objective is quite ambitious. The author wants to “to help foster better communication between East and West today”. To achieve this she challenges the view that Eastern and Western thought differ beyond comparison. She fights against stereotypical assumptions that e.g. Aristotle’s concept of essence (which Lan conflates with “truth”) is static and Confucius’ dao-the-way is decentered and therefore incompatible with inferential / discursive thinking (cf. p. 14).

Northeast/Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought
April 27-29, 2018
University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT

The sixth annual Northeast Conference on Chinese Thought and the 14th annual Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought will be holding their first ever joint conference from Friday, April 27 through Sunday, April 29 2018, at the University of Connecticut, in Storrs, CT.

In his first five-year term as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and President of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping regularly cited classical Chinese philosophy in order to bolster his image as a man of learning and virtue. In May 2014, he implied his own rectitude by invoking Confucius in Analects 15.1 at a meeting of young people: “The noble man considers righteousness essential.” Although we’ve been hearing more Marxism in connection to Xi’s name of late, there is good reason to believe he will continue to reach for a neo-traditionalist brand of political legitimation over the next five years. But his apparent erudition is selective….

Warp, Weft, and Way is a group blog of Chinese and Comparative philosophy. Its primary purpose is to promote and stimulate discussion of Chinese philosophy and cross-tradition inquiry among scholars and students of philosophy, whatever their level of training. Contributors include active scholars with a variety of philosophical interests and approaches.

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